


Inheritance

by dirtypuzzle



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, Gen, I'm taking aspects of the epilogue and doing actually interesting things with them lol, Pick Your Five Perspectives, Post-Canon, it's an alternate post-canon if that makes any sense lmfao
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-20
Updated: 2020-12-20
Packaged: 2021-03-11 04:15:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,339
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28189071
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dirtypuzzle/pseuds/dirtypuzzle
Summary: The last time Draco speaks to Daphne, it’s the dead of night and he’s had a fucking shite day.[Or: After the war, sisters and families pick up the pieces in whatever way they can.]
Relationships: Astoria Greengrass/Draco Malfoy, Harry Potter/Ginny Weasley
Comments: 1
Kudos: 9





	1. Draco

The halls of St. Mungo’s are quiet at this time of night, and Draco revels in the silence underneath bright lights and the laid-back side glances of the night healers. He’s not sure when visitation ended, but hopefully his mum hadn’t had too much trouble with Scorpius. 

It’s been months, but the healers still have their hands tied and Draco’s already ranted and raved, broken useless shite in the privacy of his empty bedroom—all that’s left is exhaustion.

Astoria has a month, maybe two if she’s incredibly lucky. Scorpius tries to spend as much time as he possibly can with her, and Draco never turns him down. He barely got Scorpius to leave Astoria’s side before the healers announced the end of visitation. 

She’s pale. Paler than he’s ever seen her. She barely ate, even with assistance, and it’s an uphill battle to keep her hydrated. It’s been one of the bad days, not that she’s had much else lately.

He knew this would happen when he married her, that she’s always lived with one foot in the grave, but to watch her wither as he sits, useless? A new sort of pain he can add to his collection. One he wouldn’t wish on anyone. And for Scorpius to bear witness to every excruciating moment? 

Fuck is he tired.

“Mr. Malfoy?” He glances up from the floor he’s stared at for hours now to meet the sympathetic eyes of a healer. Avers, if he remembers correctly. “There’s a woman in the floo asking after you. Normally we don’t allow folks after hours, but she says it’s urgent.” 

“Did she provide a name?” He can’t imagine who would have pressing news for him besides his mum, and the healers know her well. 

The healer shakes her head. “Not a surname. Only Daphne.” 

_Well_ , he thinks ruefully, waving the nurse off to meet her at the floo, _there goes any plans to sleep tonight._

Stepping into an out-of-the-way sitting area with his sister-in-law is final in a way that Draco is beginning to hate. She’s wrapped tightly in weathered travel robes, the same sort he saw the last time she bothered herself to visit, and her hair’s pulled loosely out of her face. Even after a decade and a half, she hardly seems to have changed beyond new frown lines and crow’s feet. He isn’t surprised that she’s gone unchanged, but somehow it’s still jarring.

Draco takes a seat in a not uncomfortable chair. “I’m surprised you came around. She’s written for months.” 

There’s no immediate response. Daphne used to be unreadable on the best of days, but he suspects it’s more to do with the years than her skill that keeps him in the dark now. They went to school together and he’s heard all of the childhood stories. His wife may not have seen her sister in years, but they were inseparable once. For Astoria, he thinks they still are. 

“How long does she have?” Daphne asks. She leans forward to rest her elbows on her knees, arms forward as if he has better answers than he does. 

“A month. Two.” 

This gets a reaction. He thinks that tightened, twisting of her lips projects her self-loathing loud and clear. Or maybe he’s just hopeful. “Are you staying?” he asks. 

She holds eye contact long enough for him to see the regret she’s not bothering to mask and says, “No.” 

Draco’s lip curls. She has the audacity to come here, at the end of her own sister’s life, to talk to _him_? She’s going to leave like Astoria means nothing? How fucking vile. “Then why are you _here_.”

“I’ve transferred all Greengrass assets to Scorpius,” she says. Her eyes dart around the alcove as if she expects Astoria to jump at her from the shadows any moment. “It’s under your temporary management at Gringotts.” 

He works his jaw to get ahold of his anger and annoyance, stares at the wall until he can formulate a response that’s even vaguely civil. The quiet bustle of the night staff passing through the halls helps ground him. All of it’s familiar now—the healers on shift, the house elves that take care of this ward, the best out-of-the-way room to take tea. Still not looking at Daphne, he spits, “Abandoning the family now, are we?” He turns and zeroes in on her pathetic contrition. “Wash your hands of the responsibility and run?”

The guilt quickly morphs into anger as Daphne’s eyes narrow and she straightens in her seat. When she speaks, her voice is razor thin and just as sharp. “I’m abandoning _nothing_. My parents are rotting away in Azkaban for the rest of their miserable lives and Astoria—.” Smartly, she doesn’t finish that thought. “I won’t have kids; what’s the point in waiting for—?”

_Bang!_ Draco holds onto the end of his composure by a slowly fraying thread, but he can barely believe she has the fucking _gall_ to act ignorant. She ignores Astoria for fourteen years and never bothers to once meet Scorpius, but now she wants to leave him the Greengrass inheritance? He couldn’t help it; slamming his hand against the end table between them sufficiently catches her attention. 

“If you want the Greengrass name to die,” Draco hisses, hand fisted on the table, “take it to your own grave. Do _not_ put another family in ashes on my son’s shoulders.” 

Daphne scoffs, a bitter hack not unlike herself. “Spare me. We’re all in the same sunk boat. You precious Malfoys are no different.” 

“And the Blacks?” Draco shoots back. “I refuse to be complicit in handing Scorpius the ruins of a world he not only knows nothing of, but has no responsibility to.” 

“Why on earth would he inherit the Black estate?” Daphne asks. The disbelief is palpable, and Draco is sorely tempted to wipe that idiotic look off of her face. “Is it not Potter’s?” 

Draco can’t help but roll his eyes. “Posthumous exoneration doesn’t exactly put Potter’s careless godfather back on the family tapestry,” he sneers. “Nor did he want any of it beyond personal effects.”

Silence settles between them. Draco rather likes her when she isn’t speaking. He doesn’t need her to leave Scorpius anymore bloody money—maybe meeting the boy for the first time in his life would have swayed Draco’s opinion. Nor does he have any patience for Daphne anymore. He’s committed his share of atrocities, made his share of decisions that can’t be atoned for, but Daphne had no skin in the game and still left. Astoria begged Daphne to stay in England from the floor of their ransacked family manor after the Aurors dragged their silent parents out, broken heirlooms and cracked portraits in pieces at their feet, and Daphne collected her things and left the next morning.

It was spineless. Forsake the world; spit on morality; but Draco firmly stands by the belief that family—made or otherwise—trumps all else. 

Astoria sobbed at her parents’ trial. Both of them, life sentences in Azkaban. Both Greengrass and Malfoy manors were being taken apart piece by piece for evidence in other Death Eater cases, and instead of help put those painstaking pieces back together with even an attempt at dignity, Daphne disappeared in the dead of night without a word to anyone. She sat stone-faced as her family was set ablaze and humiliated, but let those ruins lie smoking for every arse-licking Light bastard to piss on. 

Showing her face here with Astoria struggling to keep food down and see her son one more agonizing day? Daphne might as well spit on her sister’s grave before Astoria even picks out a casket, and Draco has no intention of being _polite_. 

He makes eye contact with her, leans forward over the table. 

“If your next words aren’t a groveling apology”—his lip curls in disdain—“then turn around and flee like the whimpering cunt you are.”

Daphne isn’t fazed. Her eyes narrow at the corners, a sign of her indifference that she’s apparently held onto over the years. Her fingers dig into the arm of her chair and turn her fingertips white. “They won’t treat your son any better because you’ve coddled him, nor will they _ever_ let him step out of the Dark Lord’s shadow.” She leans back, disgust thick in her voice. “There’s already rumors, aren’t there?”

“He can’t grow up like we did or he’ll brand himself Dark the moment he lets his guard down,” Draco says, making sure every bit of condescension he can muster is front and center. “The best any of us can do is hope our children can claim plausible deniability, and that's a little thin if Scorpius was taught to hate mudbloods.”

Daphne raises her eyebrows. She looks amused, and his anger boils. “I see Potter’s testimony showed you the error of your ways.”

He lets his sneer speak to that. 

Daphne then casts a _tempus_ and immediately stands. She straightens her robes, though that won’t do much for the sad state of them. She gives him a once over before saying, “Do with the rest of my family what you want.” She searches his face, pierces him with a stare that feels like it lays him bare, and he hasn’t seen this before. He’s struck by the sudden realization of what fourteen years really looks like. 

“Spend your life burning it from history for all I care,” she says, turning to leave. She doesn’t look at him now but instead the bland cream of the hospital walls. “But it wasn’t Scorpius that was handed the ruins of our deluded bubble. You’ve always lived in a graveyard; I just refused to die in it.”

The floor is eerily silent after she’s gone, and Draco doesn’t move for a long time.


	2. Daphne

Daphne sits in the bare, empty husk of her home—a place that’s been in her family for centuries—and wonders what she would do now. Her parents will be put away in Azkaban without a doubt, and everything of value was taken for evidence or war reparations. She has the last of her worldly possessions scattered on the carpet in front of her and no path forward.  
  
Her parents didn’t cry or beg when the Aurors came to the door. They didn’t say a word, not even to her. They knew the moment the Battle of Hogwarts was over that someone would pay, and they would certainly owe their share.  
  
Drafty halls stand in place of homely knick knacks and furniture; where there used to be a glass chandelier framed by vaulted ceilings, now looks like a soot-stained cavern; instead of magic dancing across the walls and lighting up the room—a testament to the ethereal beauty of their craft—stagnation sucks the life out of her childhood nostalgia.  
  
This is it. She won’t stay behind to wallow in everything she’s lost, not when it’s her own fault for losing it. Irony blisters when it’s at her own expense.  
  
In a week, her father’s trial will begin. Three days after, they’ll try her mother. It’s formality more than fairness, and she has no interest in sitting stone-faced in front of a crowd out for blood while they gleefully humiliate her. The vindictive grin on the Aurors’ faces as they tore her home apart tells her what kind of farce these trials will be.  
  
The night after the Aurors left, she sat amidst broken porcelain—the only remains of a century-old set of fine china—and acknowledged their right to anger.  
  
Doesn’t matter. Wizarding Britain holds nothing but hatred now. Potter may be the Boy-Who-Lived, but he’s no Albus Dumbledore, and without that stabilizing political force, a blind man could see where they’re headed.  
  
Looking around, she could repair some of the vases if she wants. Magic can fix the superficial damage. Instead, she stands and summons a set of traveling robes. It’s half past midnight, but she has a place in mind. She’ll stop by Gringotts in the morning.  
  
“Where are you going?”  
  
Daphne doesn’t turn around. The shakiness in Astoria’s voice warns her, tells her there are tears that will keep her here if she sees them.  
  
But even her little sister, who will slowly wither away to nothing decades too young, only reminds her that she won’t stay. The guilt settles behind her throat where she’s sure it will stick. “I don’t know yet,” she says, and it’s thankfully steadier than she thought.  
  
There’s a heavy pause. And then— “Why are you leaving?”  
  
“I—”  
  
“Why’re you leaving _me_?” Astoria demands in a devastated tremor, and then there’s hands on Daphne’s shoulders, spinning her around. The betrayal in Astoria’s eyes as she frantically searches Daphne’s face cuts deep. “After everything, you’re going to—what? Take off without a word?”  
  
“No, I—” Daphne tries to say, but Astoria’s having none of it.  
  
“No what? No, you weren’t leaving? Or no, you weren’t going to leave without talking to me first?” she spits, but the anger loses its heat because of the tears gathering in her eyes and her shredded composure. “Are you skipping their trial?”  
  
Kingsley Shacklebolt’s resigned posture, shoulders almost slumped as he gazed out over the remaining Slytherins after the Battle flashes behind her eyes. The familiar visage of a man with a job to do, no matter how distasteful or necessary—and Daphne can’t begrudge him that—but she doesn’t want to see the fallout.  
  
She lets her silence hang between them loud and clear.  
  
Astoria valiantly tries to hold back her tears, but when Daphne meets her eyes, she sobs, chest heaving and choking on her breath. It echoes off the bare walls of the manor, punishing Daphne for her selfishness. She hoped that she could avoid this—avoid this _shame_ —but that’s a luxury none of them can afford.  
  
“Please,” Astoria whispers between sobs. The hope in her eyes is a twisted kind of pitiful that makes Daphne sick. “Please don’t leave.” She looks every bit fifteen, surrounded by the decaying childhood she should still be a part of.  
  
Daphne hesitates, unsure at first if she’s welcome, but pulls Astoria into a crushing hug anyway. More tears dampen her robes, so she squeezes tighter. “You still have a life here.” Her throat threatens to close up, but she fights it down. “You can’t throw that away just because I don’t.”  
  
“What a life.” Astoria scoffs, fingers digging into Daphne’s shoulder painfully, knowingly. “What am I throwing away? Nothing I want if—.” She chokes up, either unable or unwilling to voice the thought.  
  
They stay there in a valiant attempt at pushing away the inevitable, but Daphne has nothing to give her, no assurance. She knows that she won’t be forgiven if she walks out their front door. Astoria is kind and forgiving, but this is an unforgivable offense Daphne can’t let Astoria brush off, the way it needs to be.  
  
“Will you be back?” Astoria asks, voice barely audible but still loud in the cavernous silence.  
  
Daphne sees the scorch marks staining the walls, hears the _crunch_ of glass underneath their feet, and says, “No.” She pulls out of the hug—makes for the door.  
  
The cold humidity brings her back to reality, and she pulls her robes tighter against the chill. It feels like rain; she hopes it pours. She ignores the crying at her back and refuses to hesitate on the steps, leaving her family’s ancestral home a gaping wound for someone else to heal. For a moment, she thinks Astoria might follow her out, but the calm silence of the night isn’t disturbed once the front doors shut quietly, so Daphne makes her way down the drive with only the sound of her boots on the flagstones.  
  
At the end of the drive, right next to the street, she sees exactly who she wanted to avoid.  
  
Theo, dressed in pristine gray robes and the Nott ring sitting conspicuously on his left ring finger, steps forward and gives her a shrewd once-over. His annoying, reedy voice cuts through the previous atmospheric calm and puts her nerves on edge. “Leaving already? Weren’t your parents just hauled off?”  
  
Her upper lip pulls back with appropriate disdain, her hands carefully loose. “You’re unusually tasteless tonight.”  
  
“Maybe,” he acquiesces with a nod, giving her an affable smile. “But we have to hurry if we want to properly appeal your parents’ sentence.”  
  
It’s difficult keeping up the vague disgust and level indifference, but she thinks of Astoria crying in their wrecked manor and says, “That’s impossible. No one even remotely involved is getting off or else there’d be riots. Shacklebolt will give as many Death Eaters the Kiss as he can justify without the Wizengamot deposing him and everyone else might as well kiss freedom goodbye.”  
  
Theo doesn’t let up, and the excitement in his voice puts her further off. “If it were anyone else, sure, but if anyone has a legitimate claim of innocence, it’s your parents. Besides” —his eyes go just a touch wild as he steps closer— “it isn’t about getting your parents off. It’s about keeping the Wizengamot sympathetic.”  
  
Daphne’s breath catches, but she shouldn’t be surprised to hear it. Her father warned her before his arrest that the Dark families would want a martyr, someone they could project persecution onto, and who better than two orphaned girls whose family had always been neutral.  
  
Her father told her to never give them the right, and she took it to heart.  
  
 _“We didn’t survive because we shouted our intentions from the rooftops, and we don’t take sides because every one of them would ruin us.”_  
  
Theo very obviously wants to revive the Dark. Even in the poor visibility, Daphne can make out the humiliation and shame and devastation she feels simmering underneath her own skin, but Theo’s turned it into revenge that he believes is vengeance, and she has no intention of spiraling with him.  
  
She refuses to stay here and let every scorned Dark inbred with a martyr complex drag her family through such useless public shaming. She will not be drawn and quartered by her so-called allies because their master race philosophy is—surprise—unpopular among the Light.  
  
None of this is a revelation. As soon as Death Eaters were confirmed to have escaped the Battle, Daphne knew that the Greengrass name would be the next battleground, and she an unwilling player.  
  
Wizarding Britain can piss off, as far she’s concerned. Her family is no tool.  
  
Her voice is firm as she says, “I won’t be staying for their trial. There’s no releasing them, and the Wizengamot won’t be sympathetic towards anyone unless they want a riot.” Theo bristles, but she ignores him and continues her way to the street. She could Apparate, but she’s in the mood for a bit of travel tonight, and the Knight Bus will work fine. Without stopping, she looks to the side and calls behind, “I heard your father liked to hear _Crucio_ victims scream.” Her lips pull back in a sneer he can’t see. “Remember that next time you want a martyr.”  
  
There’s a scuffle behind her and then: “I can always ask your sister!”  
  
Daphne stops, mid-way through raising her wand. For a moment, she entertains the idea. For a moment, she wonders if Astoria would do it, if she would be so desperate for what she lost that she’d believe Theo’s promise of freeing their parents. But only for a moment.  
  
When she glances back at Theo’s poor attempt at hiding his anger, she slowly raises an eyebrow comically high and looks him up and down. He goes red and she tilts her head. “You could.” She raises her wand and hears the Knight Bus approaching. “But you can’t afford to associate yourself with Draco and we both know it.”  
  
Theo doesn’t say anything as she steps onto the bus and pays her fare. She refuses to look at him as she pulls away from Greengrass Manor.


End file.
